It’s no secret that your body undergoes a rather unusual and oftentimes exhausting journey throughout the process of pregnancy. From skin changes to weight fluctuations, there’s simply no shortage of physical disruptions to have to be on the lookout for during your pregnancy. Sadly, these physical disruptions often include changes to your hair, which can be incredibly challenging and frustrating to try and navigate during this time. The hormonal changes caused by pregnancy can lead to a severe disruption in your hair’s natural growth cycle, and it’s likely that you’ll experience incredibly inconsistent periods of accelerated hair growth followed by accelerated hair loss.
Pregnancy and Your Hair
During pregnancy, your hormones are elevated to an extraordinary degree, along with an increase in overall blood circulation in the body. Because of these two physical changes, your hair’s growth cycle is significantly altered, and it takes a significantly longer amount of time for your hair to fall out than usual. The average woman sheds around 100 or so hairs on a daily basis, but during pregnancy this number can be dramatically reduced. As a result, it may seem as if your hair is growing faster than before, requiring more frequent trips to the salon for a trim.
What Happens After Pregnancy
After giving birth, your body no longer requires an elevated level of hormones and increased blood circulation, causing a dramatic drop in hormone production and reduced blood circulation. Because of this, your hair starts to play “catch-up” when it comes to returning to its pre-pregnancy growth cycle, which can cause an extraordinary amount of hair loss in a short period of time. Following pregnancy, it’s not uncommon to shed nearly 400 hairs a day, which can come in the form of large clumps of hair falling out at once.
While there’s nothing you can do to prevent your post-partum hair loss, you can certainly adopt several strategies to make this period more tolerable:
Tip #1
Use High-Quality Hair Tools
Heat styling is damaging enough to even normal hair, and it can be a disaster for the kind of brittle, thin hair you find yourself with following birth. Take it easy on your hair and allow it to normalize during this bumpy period.
Tip #2
Aim for Volume
With your hair rapidly falling out, you’ll be left with lots of brittle, limp hairs that lack body and volume. Look for volumizing conditioners and leave-in treatments to add a bit of fullness and body to your hair.
Tip #3
Keep Your Diet and Stress in Check
While you can’t completely prevent hair loss following birth, there are certainly several things that can make the hair loss better or worse. Diet, for one, can play a huge factor, as you’ll want to ensure you supply your body with enough vitamins and minerals to ensure your hair’s follicle production is up to par. Additionally, stress can make things much worse, so try keeping yourself as relaxed and stress-free as possible.